


a glimpse of a life

by babaoreilly



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Based on a film, But also, But mostly just Maedhros, Fanon Celegorm, Fingon is not, Fluff and Angst, Husbands, Kid Fic, M/M, Maedhros is an idiot in lots of different ways, Maedhros is bad at feelings, These Idiots, and is being a little bitch about it, eventual explicit sex writing if you're into that, fanon ALL feanorians, i've made this sound like crack and it's NOT, lots of minor background relationships, maedhros is unwillingly thrown into a parallel universe, magic alternative universey stuff, probably not as silmarillion adjacent as I intended it to be, that tag makes sense i promise, unwholesome and unhealthy families, wholesome and healthy families
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:48:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29918538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babaoreilly/pseuds/babaoreilly
Summary: “You told me you two were gonna get married once”, Maglor says, quietly breaking the silence. He lifts the yellow post-it from his desk and thumbs the paper like it might hold the answer to his many, many, problems, “You had the proposal planned out and everything.”“Over a decade ago now, Kano. I don’t think I should still be held to the lovesick fantasies of a naive twenty-two-year-old, do you?”He feels Maglors silver gaze burning into him and turns round, “What?”, he asks.Maglor shrugs, sniffs, and flicks the post-it note away, Maedhros doesn’t bother to see where it lands.“We should have never left that place” his brother says, right before the door slams shut behind him.Maedhros' fast and lavish lifestyle is turned upside-down one christmas night when an asshole named Mandos decides to teach him a lesson by throwing him into a life where he has three kids, owns a minivan and is married to Fingon. This ain't crack.
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo
Comments: 23
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The plot is based on The Family Man film (2000) - loosely, in some parts - but you don't have to have watched it to follow the story. I did fully intend to post this at Christmas but it turns out I'm a really slow writer, so this is happening in March.
> 
> It should be updated regularly, the fic is written it just needs editing. No beta, so expect mistakes in abundance.

**Alqualonde Airport, Eleven Years Ago**

  
  


_ ‘Flight JR517 to Formenos is now boarding. Please make your way to Gate 3A’ _

Maedhros stands and shifts his rucksack from one shoulder to the other. The heavy weight of it makes him tilt like an old balance scale with unequal plates. Little wonder, really, considering he’s crammed his entire twenty-two years inside of it; his clothes, seven pairs of shoes, even though he only ever wears two and he’s wearing one of the pairs now, his laptop, a five-year-old iPod, three phone chargers - two stolen from his brothers’ rooms, a beat-up copy of A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (technically Caranthirs), his Keurig coffee machine so he doesn’t have to drink Atar’s caustic black tar for the next six months, and the dozen or so bottles of moisturisers, aftershaves and deodorants that he swiped from various bathroom counters back home.

“Guess it’s time”, Fingon says from beside him. His hands are shoved deep inside the pockets of his Hithlum University hoodie and his shoulders are hunched forward, Maedhros can’t see his face; he has it bowed low and out of sight from his half-foot-higher viewpoint, he’s left to stare at a mass of unruly black waves, dishevelled and unkempt due to a snapped hair tie during the rush of leaving that morning. 

Maedhros rubs along the outlines of the boarding pass and passport in his jean pocket, checking it hasn’t fallen out in the fifteen-minutes since he last checked, “Guess so,” he mumbles, looking up at the flickering orange numbers above him a little queasily, “That’s the second call. Atar will have my head if I miss another - ah shit. Don’t do that, don’t do that...”, he says when Fingon finally looks at him, wet cheeks and red eyes, “We promised we wouldn’t do that”

No crying at the airport. No blubbering, or sappy goodbyes or begging anyone to stay. That was what they promised. They’d done all of that last night in Maedhros’ bedroom. It was why he’d risked life and limb telling Fëanor he wasn’t getting on their original scheduled flight in the first place. He can’t do it again. 

“I  _ know _ ”, Fingon sniffs, wipes his face and then his nose with his ratty grey sleeve, “I know”

“C’mere”, Maedhros pulls him in with a hand at the back of his neck until they’re pressed together and Fingon’s head is resting underneath his chin,“It’s not forever”, he says into the abundance of hair below him, sputtering out the strays that - as is usually the case - have made their way into his mouth, “Might not even be a year. Just until we get Silmaril off the ground. When Atar doesn’t need me anymore I’m coming straight back”

“I know”, Fingon says again.

“I love you”, Maedhros tries, lips pressed against the heated skin of his forehead so it comes out sounding more like ‘I’mhuvoo’, but Fingon only pushes away and steps back, taking his waves with him. He’s not even looking at him.

“You better go” is all he says, voice dull and mechanical. 

And he should, really. They’re going to be announcing the final call for his flight any minute now and he can’t miss it. He’s already skating on what has become perpetually thin ice with Atar just by being  _ with  _ Fingon, and if the blow-up was going to be levelled at him alone he’d buckle up and take it. But Fëanor has recently acquired a penchant for directing his anger seven ways no matter the cause of it, and if he has to call and admit to skipping  _ another  _ flight… He may as well emancipate himself now. 

But it’s  _ Fingon _ ... 

“Don’t be like that”, Maedhros pulls him back with a snatch around his elbow and he falls into him unresistingly, like he was expecting it. Which he was. Because a relationship started in childhood is nothing if not predictable. Fingon can probably predetermine his every move by now, as well as the seven after. 

He kisses his forehead first. Then his cheeks and his nose and every inch of his face that he can until Fingon is laughing and trying to squirm out of his grip like a hairy, convulsing worm in the sun, “Quit it”, he snorts in that unpretty but always funny way he does, and Maedhros is only forced to relent when he finds himself being pushed back with a cold, clammy hand smushed across his face. 

“Do you still love me?” he tries to ask seriously, but his jaw aches from smiling so wide. There are deep red blotches splattered over Fingon’s cheeks and he has to forcibly stop himself from starting all over again at the sight of it. 

“Always, stupid.”

For a blissful moment, both grinning idiotically at one another, it’s almost like they’re not saying goodbye at all. There’s no grieved scowls or half-hearted attempts to talk about literally fucking anything else but the reason why they’re both sitting in an airport at seven a.m on Christmas Eve. It’s much easier to pretend everything’s fine when your boyfriend isn’t sulking like you drank the last of the coffee and forgot to pick up more on your way home the night before. He could stay like this, right now, exactly where he is, and if the world was to end right then he’d go happily with not one single fucking regret but wishing he’d picked up more coffee pods that day two years ago. 

_ ‘This is the final boarding call for Flight JR517. Please make your way to Gate 3A’ _

Fingon stiffens in his arms and the moment’s over. 

“I’ll be back before you know it”, he says with a last kiss, and then another. And two more after that. Then he turns around and walks straight to the security line - now dwindled down to one - and refuses to look back. If he does he just might not get on the plane at all. 

“Maitimo, wait!” Fingon yanks at his t-shirt and pulls him back around before he even gets the chance to slide the boarding pass from his pocket, “Don’t go”

“Finno…”, he groans, swiping two hands down his face. He can’t do this now, not now, it isn’t fair.

“No, I know. I  _ know, _ ” Fingon grasps at his wrists and holds them down between them, “I know what you’re going to say but. What if you don’t?”

“We’ve already talked about this, Fin,”

Over and over and over. They’ve been planning this future since they could both fathom any real idea of what one was. 

“This is the plan.”

_ Their  _ plan. This is how he gives Fingon the life he deserves. He isn’t going to stay settled in Tirion like Fingons parents, or his Amme. He isn’t going to pretend to be happy with a mediocre life and an income wasted on feeding a swarm of children and trying to pay off the mortgage on a house that loses its value with every year that drags by. Maedhros won’t let that happen. Not to them. No, when  _ they  _ start a family, Fingon and himself, it’s not going to be three to a room, two per bed, toys and clothes shared and handed down between seven. It will be a bedroom each and all the shit they could ever want inside them. Holidays will be spent in the sun and sand and five-star hotels, not two hours north at the closest affordable coastal town. 

Atar is right. Tirion is a place for people satisfied with the unexceptional, and if you want to make something of yourself then you have to be prepared to do what it takes to get there. If he, Atar and his brothers put in the work now, if they can make Silmaril more than just the impoverished family-run business it is in Tirion; they could be giants in Formenos. And when he’s cleaning up as Senior Vice President of Silmaril and Fingon is a star Professor at some top-level university they’ll never have to worry about the unexceptional again. 

“Oh forget the plan, Maitimo!” Fingon snaps, “I don’t care about the stupid fucking plan I just...This feels wrong, don’t you think?”

Of course it does. Leaving Fingon was never going to feel  _ right _ . They’ve had their hands in each other's pockets - and other places - ever since they turned fifteen. Cradle to the grave, Amme always says. But Maedhros isn’t going to let a momentary feeling of ‘wrongness’ stop him from doing what he has to, “Sweetheart, if we want that life we’ve always talked about-”

“-I just want  _ you,  _ Maitimo,” Fingon interrupts angrily, releasing his grip on his wrists with a sharp jerk, “Everything else is…”, he gestures with a wave of his hands like he’s searching for the right word, “Secondary”

The woman standing behind the security desk coughs pointedly again - he ignored her first two - and Maedhros turns to give her a placating smile, “Finno, this is just airport talk. Nobody thinks straight at the airport, I’ll call you later. You’ll see”, he squeezes his hand and pulls away, handing over his pass as he does but Fingon isn’t finished. 

“No, listen. Maedhros” he’s tugging at the hem of his t-shirt now, stretching the thin cotton material with white-knuckled hands, “It’s… It feels like if you get on that plane then you’re not going to come back.”

He barks out a surprised laugh, “What?” That’s what this is all about? “Of course I’m coming back.”

He looks at Fingon, unwashed hoodie, dirty converse, dirty face and wild hair. He has tears streaming steadily down his splotchy, mottled cheeks, his nose is running and the redness around his puffy eyes makes their green look as bright as wet grass. He doesn’t see the utter absurdity of what he’s saying, that Maedhros could even so much as imagine not coming back to him. 

“Fin, I’m coming back. I swear.”

“ _ Please _ don’t go.”

“I’ll be home before you know it.”

He doesn’t have the time to say more like he wishes he could, Fingon’s crying unguardedly now and it’s killing him to watch. He realises that, in that very moment, all he really wants to do is take him home and forget all about Formenos, they’ll make another plan together, one that doesn’t mean spending a year apart. Instead, he turns around and walks straight through to the gate without so much as a second glance over his shoulder. Another look back and he knows he’ll never go a step further.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Formenos, Present Day**

  
  


It’s the sound of his alarm chiming that wakes Maedhros first - always five-forty-five a.m on Thursdays - followed by the familiar hum of his bedroom shutters rising, telling him that it’s time to get up. 

Bare feet on heated marble tiles, he pads out of the room, eyes still glazed over with sleep - and walks across the open plan floor of his penthouse apartment until he reaches the kitchen where he can start the brewing process on his gourmet coffee maker.

“Blinds open”, he says through a yawn, stretching his long arms above his head. His sequentially popping joints make up the soundtrack as he watches his motorised blinds reveal a luminous Formenos sunrise. Life is always exceptional in the city of wealth, but it’s even better from 360 feet above it. 

Better still when you own a third of it. 

He doesn’t wear anything for bed, likes the feel of his 1000 thread-count sheets against his skin too much for that, so he’s still completely bare when he feels two slender arms wrap around his middle and draw him back against another sleep-warm (and gloriously naked) body. Maedhros feels the goosebumps rise across his skin as a pair of lips leave wet kisses along his spine and up towards his neck.

“Mm, is that coffee for me?” a silky, lilting voice says from behind him, muffled slightly because their lips are pressed gently against the muscle of his shoulder.Deft fingers trace circles through the coarse hairs below his naval and Maedhros smiles and thinks, sure. He’ll make him coffee. And not just to show off the exceptional quality of the stuff, but also to give his thanks for the truly fantastic fuck the night before. 

Dior reads his acquiescence and releases him. He leans back against the marble kitchen island, unrestrained and completely relaxed in the way only those people 100% assured in their own attractiveness can be. Maedhros allows himself a minute to appreciate it, grey eyes sweep down svelte legs and what sits between them. He’s a thing of beauty, that’s for sure. Hottest thing this side of Beleriand and Maedhros practically has him on tap. 

He could have him right now if he wanted to and Eru, does he. But if he starts fucking him now then he’s going to be setting himself back at least thirty minutes, and he can’t afford to give away a single one today. He’ll make them both a coffee, usher Dior out the door and get ready for his meeting with Fëanor, which history has proven can last anywhere from the time it takes to sit down in the reserved leather seat, to an entire working day. 

Although...

Maybe he could make some time  _ after _ ...

“What are you doing tonight?” he asks, letting his eyes drag back down Dior’s exposed body so he’s under no illusion about what it is that he’s suggesting.

Dior looks back with a face full of incredulity and a raised eyebrow, “It’s Christmas Eve?”

Ah. 

He’d forgotten. 

Or rather, he’d forgotten that Christmas was a day people held to any more importance than any other. 

“I’m heading back to Doriath this afternoon,” Dior continues, even though Maedhros hadn’t asked and, quite frankly, didn’t much care, “Family.” he shrugs.

Maedhros hands him a steaming porcelain cup of the best coffee in the continent and watches him carry it back across the floor towards the bedroom, giving him an outstanding view of his arse. He follows.

“You could go tomorrow instead?” he suggests, eyes never leaving his backside, because what difference will a day make anyway? “I’ll give you ride”

There’s a bottle of Château Lafite in the cooler; let him get a few oranges and cloves, a couple sticks of cinnamon and they’ve got themselves a joyous little crockpot of mulled wine. He can do festive, if that’s what he wants, he’ll unwrap him underneath the Christmas Tree and everything. Of course, he’ll have to get himself one of those, too. 

Dior smiles like he’s reading his mind, “Another time.” he says.

And that’s that. 

Dior pulls on his t-shirt picked up off the floor and slides his legs into the same dark jeans Maedhros slid off the night before. He disposes of the speciality coffee in three clumsy gulps, which Maedhros definitely disapproves of, and clonks his cup down on the sideboard. 

“It was nice meeting you,” he says, standing on his tip-toes and pressing warmed lips onto his jawline, “Again”

And then with the sound of a closing door clicking back into place he’s gone. Maedhros smiles, he likes the ones who can show themselves out without any of the awkwardness that usually comes with the territory of A Morning After. 

He’s still smiling when he ducks into his ensuite and the walk-in shower waiting for him. The rich scent of Amouage shower gel permeates through the pristine white room, he can practically feel his skin thanking him for it as he scrubs his body. It’s worth every coin of its three-hundred and fifty. Another five minutes and he’s rinsing out Philip.B shampoo and running some leave-in conditioner through the long strands of his red hair. He’s overdue a trim, it’s almost at the same length it was when he was in college, brushing nearly past his shoulders. But he likes the freedom of being able to tie it to the top of his head and forget about it when he wants to. That Fëanor has a long-standing hatred towards such uncultivated styles is simply a bonus. 

“Playlist five”, he says when he’s out and dry and standing in the closet that measures twice the size of his shared teenage bedroom. Van Morrison starts humming from the built-in speakers while Maedhros runs his hands indecisively along a row of suits. Eventually, he chooses the Brioni, a charcoal grey suit and black shirt, with a pair of Tom Ford oxford shoes. He takes a long look in the mirror, makes sure everything is up to par and practices the impartial but still no-fucks-given expression he’ll be plastering on when facing Fëanor today, it matches the one looking back at him from the framed copy of Forbes he has hanging beside the mirror. Back when he made Man of the Year two years ago. When he built this palace, actually. Lord of Himring. That’s what they titled him. It’s not his only magazine cover, of course, there’s been a few over the years; with his brothers, Fëanor, with other great people doing great things. This is his only solo one though, and the one he’s most proud of. Himring is a building of his design, his making, and it stands fifty-feet higher than all of the Silmaril Towers. 

He’s singing by the time he’s reached his personal elevator, ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone’, as it happens, proof that he can get into the spirit when he’s happy enough, and why shouldn’t he be? His life is idyllic. He’d be singing from the fucking rooftops if he thought anyone might hear from so high above the clouds. 

The elevator doors ding open on the ground floor and he’s immediately greeted by Mairon, his assistant holding out a plastic carton of kombucha and reeling through a list of someone-someones from somewhere-somewhere who needs a callback, an answer or an RSVP. Same shit, different names. The doors to the building are opened from the front by his doorman, Gothmog, who greets him with a nod and a ‘Morning, Boss’, but no smile, Maedhros isn’t sure he’s capable of such habits. Mairon has called in the car, so the driver’s already waiting out front to pick them up and take them to Silmaril. 

He sits on the leather seats of his Bentley Mulsanne watching the streets of Formenos wake up through the window in a mostly easy silence until Mairon breaks it with what feels like an electric shock down his spine. 

“Ah. Someone named Findekáno called, twice last night and once already this morning. Claims he’s a cousin of yours?”

All of the air in Maedhros’ lungs freezes. It’s like he’s been dropped into a vat of ice-water and suddenly it’s not Mairon’s voice he hears anymore but the static sound of a tannoy announcing flight departures and final calls and an age-long familiar voice begging him not to go. He can smell stale coffee and jet fuel and coconut-scented shampoo from hair that’s perpetually clinging to some part of his face.

“Findekáno ?” he repeats, even as his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, 

“That’s what he said”, Mairon says in the droll tone he knows him for, unaware that he’s just upended Maedhros’ entire morning with one single fucking word. He pulls out a notebook from Eru knows where and flips it open to a page with three yellow post-it notes covered in unintelligible - to him at least - red scrawls, “He wants to know if you received his emails, if you had any response and to call him back on this number.” 

He rips off one of the yellow squares and tries to hand it to him, but Maedhros waves it away with a sickly feeling swirling in his gut, not even able to look at the numbers left there, “Leave it on my desk.”

It’s fifteen more agonizingly long minutes in the car to the Silmaril Towers and Maedhros spends the entirety of it pondering just why the fuck  _ Fingon  _ would want to speak to him. Now. Eleven years after Maedhros turned their relationship into some dictionary-definition of the term FUBAR. But his brain provides no plausible theories. None that he’s willing to brook, anyway. 

Thankfully, when the three shimmering glass towers appear in his line of sight he no longer has the time to think about things that are better left shamefully in the past. Fëanor pits them - the Silmaril Towers, that is - as the eighth wonder of the world. All narcissistic showboating for the most part, but he’d have to be a blind man not to be awestruck every time the sun makes crystallized rainbows of the glass plates. Especially beautiful on mornings like this. He’d had them designed when he was still little more than a craft artist with too grand an ambition, making trinkets and cutting stones for jewellery in a tiny shop that barely made enough profit to keep running. And Maedhros helped see them through to fruition before he’d even hit twenty-four. 

And now Fëanor and Maedhros and the entire Silmaril company was the biggest architectural firm in Beleriand, growing every day with never-ending desire for more. 

One day Silmaril would have stock in the entire world. 

With that serving as a reminder of just how exceptional his life is now, the smile returns easily back to his face. Yellow post-it notes with forgotten names written on them in red ink are disregarded as quickly as they were ripped from the pad, the only names that matter now are the one’s Mairon has saved into his schedule for the day. 

“Good Morning, Sir”, 

“Laleith”, he nods to the woman behind the desk with a toothy smile and a wink, she rolls her eyes but the pink on her cheeks is unmistakable as she presses the button to open the elevator doors. Mairon is preoccupied with the screen of his iPad, fingers moving nimbly and as quick as if they were mechanical, so there’s no unnecessary small talk between them. Another thing Maedhros is thankful for, because while Mairon is an outstanding assistant - truly he thinks there could be no-one better, as a conversationalist? Maedhros would stand a better chance engaging in repartee with a vampire bat. 

He receives the merest nod of acknowledgement when the elevator doors open again, Mairon turns into Maedhros office and Maedhros himself carries straight on to the farthest end of the tower. He smiles at the staff he passes, he’s greeted with enthusiastic ‘good morning, Sirs’ and ineffective attempts at gaining his attention. He smiles politely and engagedly right until the moment he pushes through the gleaning steel door at the end of the corridor. 

“Well met, brother.”

Maglor sits in the centre of the room at Fëanor's desk, legs crossed at the ankles, soiled boots on the mahogany wood as he slouches back in the red Italian leather chair, hands behind his head with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“Fëanor will have your head” Maedhros says, looking at the boots pointedly. Fëanor doesn’t actually give two shits about the state of his desk, he’ll have it replaced before the day's end if he wishes to, but something he loves above all, saving his towers, is finding a reason to breathe fire at the person closest to him. 

“Fëanor can go fuck himself” Maglor mumbles, rubbing a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, eyeing it hungrily but not quite brave enough to light it despite his blustering, He sniffs loudly then looks up at Maedhros, “I mean it. He can. Fuck himself all the way to the Halls.”

“Sure” Maedhros pauses in his flipping through the blueprints of a new chain of hotels set to be built along the coasts of Gondolin, what might be their biggest deal in five years if they can secure it, “Why are you here, Maglor?”

He shrugs and pops the unlit cigarette between his chapped lips. Maedhros hasn’t seen him in months, longer than that probably, and though the dark, purpling bruises under his eyes and the grey pallor of his skin is nothing new, the sharp line of cheekbones that it’s hanging from certainly is. He’s thin even for Maglor, who, like Curufin, has always been more bone than flesh. Maedhros suspects that it’s probably because at least two of his three meals are going up his nose.

“Daeron left you again?” he guesses, not unreasonably, it was the sole reason for his last eight nosedives into degradation, after all. But Maglor isn’t given the chance to reply before the door to the office is swinging open and crashing loudly into the adjacent wall. Fëanor enters like a hurricane, words rushing from his mouth so sharp and so fast that Maedhros doesn’t even  _ try  _ to comprehend just what the fuck he’s talking about. In the usual Fëanor way, they’re directed at everyone and no one at the same time, so it matters little whether he pays him any mind or not. 

Curufin follows closely behind, silent and sullen as he always is. Fëanor’s shadow. He throws a look of distaste towards Maglor, who returns it with a middle finger, and scarcely even acknowledges that Maedhros is in the room with them; A decade of harbouring resentment towards his eldest brother for owning the title of Senior Executive whilst he has to settle for Junior has left their relationship at strictly business. Maedhros stopped giving a fuck long before Curufin did, he’s sure. 

“Get your feet off my desk”, Fëanor barks out in the first sentence Maedhros hears clearly from his Father.

Maglor obeys with an unheeded glare.

“Where’s Tyelkormo? Caranthir?”, Fëanor frowns around the office, the largest room in the Tower, also the most sparse and open. He scowls over the minimalist furnishings as though the two sons he’s looking for might be slinking unseen behind a chair or a transparent window. Maedhros doesn’t know why he bothers, after all these years he wonders why he expects them at all. When Celegorm isn’t penned in behind iron bars, he turns up when he pleases, not when he’s ordered to - not at all when he’s ordered to, in fact. Caranthir works alone, he handles the finances, the stocks and he does it all with brilliant efficiency. Yet he hasn’t stepped foot in The Silmarils in over three years and Maedhros thinks it will take more than a rash email with too many exclamation points and an overabundant use of the word ‘motherfucker’ from Fëanor to change that. 

“They won’t be coming”, Maedhros says, 

“Did you know about this?” Fëanor snaps, absent sons promptly forgotten, and shoves a tablet under Maedhros’ nose, jabbing a finger at the screen, “Did you know?”

Maedhros eyes the article with a raised eyebrow, reads the headline ‘Bauglir: Real Genius Behind The Silmaril Towers? His Own Words’ and rolls his eyes, “Why would I have known-”

“-That mother _ fucker _ ” Fëanor spits. 

Maedhros sighs and leans back, hands clasped over his torso.

“-trying to undermine EVERYTHING I’ve built here-”

Curufin’s fingers clack rhythmically across the keyboard of his laptop, focusing only on the screen in front of him like there’s no one else in the room and Fëanor isn’t about to burst a vein in his temple. He’s lost sight of Maglor, who by now has probably slunk off to the closest bathroom for another powdered breakfast and waits for Fëanor’s tirade to draw to its conclusion, of which he’s hoping is the only reason he’s been summoned here. 

“What would you like me to do about it?” he says with barely concealed indifference when the room is finally silent again. 

“He’s after Gondolin”, Fëanor says, sitting down heavily in his chair, elbows on his desk as he steeples his fingers, “I’ll shoot the bastard myself before I let that happen. Get on the phone with that snake, Salgant and secure our contract”

“And this?”, he says, pushing the tablet away across the table with two fingers, 

“I’m handling it”, Curufin mutters, gaze not lifting from his laptop screen.

And that’s...well, that could be worrying. Potentially. Curufin’s idea of ‘handling it’, Maedhros has learnt in recent years, can be anything from filing a dozen lawsuits and leaving the opposition bankrupt, to inevitably ending up on the  _ receiving  _ end of lawsuits when his quest for justice doesn’t quite fit between the walls of law. And the latter is always the case when he decides to rope Celegorm into his plans. Maedhros can only hope for his own sake, and sanity, that his most notorious of brothers is too busy abiding by the terms of his parole to want any part of it. 

“Well.”Maedhros stands, “If that’s everything…”

Fëanor dismisses him with a wave of his hand and Curufin does nothing at all. Maedhros picks up the blueprints and heads to his own office where his real work can finally start. 

Eight-fifteen a.m, he’ll give it another thirty minutes before he calls Salgant, the man isn’t known for his up-and-at-em personality, but a quarter to nine is late enough. He fingers off the notes left on his desk by Mairon, most with a number, name and a brief to-the-point explanation of why they’ve called. They’ve been left horizontally in order of importance. Immediately he grabs the first four and sticks them on the conference phone, the rest he throws away. They can call him back. 

He spends most of the day with the phone attached to his ear. Making appointments, heading meetings and mindless chatter with a journalist from Icon magazine about the needed integration between structure, aesthetic and sustainability. Mairon brings him bottled water and an egg salad sandwich just after two, followed by another list of people who need emailing and a reminder that he promised The Economist a phone interview. Salgant’s being a pain in the arse, refusing to make any verbal agreements despite Maedhros reminding him that technically they already had one when he first asked them to design the damn buildings for him, but Salgant  _ can  _ be easily swayed. Maedhros just needs the correct strategy. So he books himself a flight to Gondolin, departing at seven the next morning. He’ll persuade Salgant in person. It should take all of ten minutes if he flashes him a smile and buys him dinner at Masa. Then he can spend the rest of the day on the beach drinking whisky sours and relishing in his own brilliance. Christmas Day might be a thing worth waking up for after all. 

It’s only when Maedhros finally allows himself some time to play with a few designs of his own that Mairon clears his throat loud enough to make him look up, that he realises how dark it is, the only light in his office is coming from his computer screen.

“What is it?”, he asks, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers, his eyes stinging now that he’s looked away from the screen light. 

“It’s nine-thirty, Sir”, Mairon says, uncharacteristically awkward.

“Right?”, It’s usually closer to eleven by the time he’s making ready to leave. 

“Well, it’s Christmas Eve”, he frowns, looking everywhere but at Maedhros “Sir”

“You have plans?”, he asks, genuinely curious that this man he assumed must be at least part animatronic has a life between the hours he isn’t here attending to Maedhros. 

“Yes”, is all he says in reply, but his cheeks blotch with two pink circles and though difficult, Maedhros refrains from asking who with, the idea of him with a partner is almost too much. 

“Go”, he says with a wave of his hands, “Enjoy your night”

“Thank you. Merry Christmas”, he says reluctantly but turns back just before the door closes at his back, “Your cousin called again”

He places another post-it note on his desk and leaves. 

Maedhros looks down and reads ‘ Findekáno - 0802 735 2689’ 

“Which cousin?”

Maedhros jumps at the sound of Maglor’s voice, he’d assumed that his brother had left hours ago, looking for another hit, most likely “Eru’s sake, Kano. You need a fucking bell round your neck”

“Which cousin?”, he repeats, unphased.

“None of your business”, Maedhros mutters and turns back to his work, ignoring his brother as he drags his finger along his desk until he’s standing behind him, leaning over his shoulder and making the smell of vodka, stale cigarettes and unwashed hair suffuse underneath Maedhros’ nose, he tries to knock him away but despite his malnourished frame he’s immovable, 

“Findekáno,” he says, and Maedhros can hear the grin in his voice, “Should’ve figured that one out, shouldn’t I?”

“Haven’t you got somewhere to be?”

“Where?”, he snorts, an ugly sound, but he moves away from him anyway, allowing the air to scent immediately cleaner, “Ammes’ for cheese crackers and eggnog?”

“Why don’t you drop by and see”, Maedhros murmurs, concentration back on the design in front of him, he can’t decide on which material would be the most endurable on a coast prone to getting battered by the elements, whilst still being enough of a visual sensation that it’s worthy of the seven figures they’ll be charging. 

Maglor makes a noise much like a horse snickering, and sits himself on the chair on the other side of Maedhros’ desk, legs on the wood, reminiscent of the way he sat in Fëanor ’s office earlier, “I can just imagine how that’ll go after ten years”, he says, then after a brief but blissful silence, “You know she called to wish me Merry Christmas once? Few years back now. Said she thought I was probably the only one who would answer the phone. Know what I said?” he puts his head back and stares at the ceiling, “I said ‘I can’t talk right now’.”

Maedhros makes a noise of concession, the kind you make when you want to sound as though you're listening when you could really care less.

“And  _ I’m  _ the one she thought would be decent enough to say it back. Out of the seven of us,” Maglor laughs bitterly, ‘Six of us. Guess we shouldn’t count Amrod. Or is it five, now? I can never keep up with Celegorms situation these days; is he in prison? Is he dead? Who the fuck even knows anymore”, he pulls a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, pops one in his mouth and lights it.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

“I can’t smoke anywhere else.” Maglor says, head still thrown back as he blows out a stream of smoke.

“Go outside.”

Maglor ignores him, “You gonna call him?”

“Who?”

“Findekáno. Obviously.”

Maedhros laughs and looks up, “Why would I do that?”

It’s quiet after that, Maglor is too engrossed in his cigarette and whatever it is that’s caught his attention on the ceiling to carry on the probing. It’s time enough for Maedhros to print off a handful of designs, scribble his notes, and get himself a car booked for the morning and when he arrives in Gondolin. 

“You told me you two were gonna get married once”, Maglor says, quietly breaking the silence. He lifts the yellow post-it from his desk and thumbs the paper like it might hold the answer to his many,  _ many _ , problems, “You had the proposal planned out and everything.”

“Over a decade ago now, Kano. I don’t think I should still be held to the lovesick fantasies of a naive twenty-two-year-old, do you?”

He feels Maglors silver gaze burning into him and turns round, “What?”, he asks. Maglor shrugs, sniffs, and flicks the post-it note away, Maedhros doesn’t bother to see where it lands, 

“We should have never left that place” his brother says, right before the door slams shut behind him. 

* * *

  
  
  
  


It’s gone midnight by the time he’s powering off his computer and calling it a day. There’s the odd light still left on through the Tower as he makes his way back down, people working because they have nowhere else to be, mostly. Fëanor’s light is predictably still on, he notices, but the doors locked and will probably remain so until the kind of hours that even Maedhros finds eye-reddening. He doesn’t know when Maglor left, nor where he's gone. Or Curufin, but he doesn’t give them much beyond a second thought, he knows very little about their personal lives these days and however sad that might be regarding how close the seven of them were once upon a time, he’s found that it’s better for them all this way.

  
  
  
  


He’s not quite out of the car when he notices it. The parking lot outside Himring is vacant, eerily so. Even with the offices empty and the retail units closed for the holidays, there’s still the residential floors, which means there should be at least  _ a few  _ cars. It’s not the unoccupied lot that he notices anyway, it’s the man standing under the streetlight a couple of metres away from him. 

He’s standing so still that if the orange glow from the lamp wasn’t flickering on and off directly over him, he might not have seen him at all. He’s dressed in all black, flowing clothes that look like they were made a few centuries earlier and he has a hairless head that catches the shine of the blinking orange light. He can’t make out much else, even with the help of the light it’s still like he’s part of the shadows but Maedhros can feel his eyes on him as though they were lasers aiming directly. Something cold settles at the base of his spine. 

As he walks towards him, towards Himring - he’s not walking  _ around  _ just because some asshole decided to spend Christmas acting like a nut under a lamp post - the guy pushes himself upright and stands in his path. Maedhros stops, stares and waits, 

“Can I help you with something?” he asks sharply, not really expecting an answer and not receiving one. He frowns a little longer at a face he still can’t see even though logic says he  _ should _ , before shaking his head and stepping round, his hands shoved deep inside his pockets. The night is way too fucking cold to be getting into it with strangers. 

He’s steps away from the entrance to Himring, barely ten feet. Maedhros looks down at his phone for three seconds, five at most and when he looks up again the man is standing in front of him. So close he damn near collides with his chest - which is almost as fucking bizarre as his sudden and implausible appearance. Being that Maedhros stands at a towering six”six himself, finding that his eye-line is levelled directly at another person's collar bone is a jarring experience. 

“The fuck?” He bites out with a scowl and not-a-very-well-hidden yelp, “Do you want something?”

His fingers curl in and out of fists as he exercises holding his temper, waiting for his possible assailant to say something, but he only tilts his head and stares back with dark eyes that look unsettlingly inhuman.

“Do you want something?” he asks again, over enunciating each word

“Do I?”

The man speaks, finally, but it’s hardly a relief to Maedhros. If anything the deep, reverberant boom of his voice sends another shiver up his spine, 

“What could I possibly want from you, son of Fëanor ?” he says with a smile so wide and sharp, Maedhros is reminded of a shark, “Maybe it’s you, who needs something from me?”

Despite his sudden and inexplicable fear of the man towering over him, Maedhros laughs and shakes his head at what’s being implied, “I already have everything.”

“Is that right?”

“Listen”, he starts, closing his eyes and pinching his brow - it’s easier to talk when he isn’t looking at him, “Is there a point to any of this? Or can I go?”

Surprisingly, the man steps back and to the side, making space for him to walk past, “You’re free to leave”, he says, like it was never in question.

  
  
  


“Remember that you bought this on yourself, Nelyafinwë.”

The voice calls to him when he’s already one step inside the building and Maedhros turns around at the sound of his name coming from a stranger, “What the fuck does…”, he voice trails off into a whisper, “...that mean”

There’s no-one there anymore. No sign that there ever was. Even the streetlight has stopped flashing. 

Maedhros stares into the dull orange glow before all his thoughts collapse into one and he gives up. He’s done. He’s obviously getting too old to keep surviving on four hours sleep and gourmet coffee, he’s not twenty-one anymore and it’s obviously taking its toll. He’s going to bed and then he’s going to spend the rest of the holidays relaxing in Gondolin. He obviously needs it. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen; about the names I've given the kids... i tried the gil-galad route and it didn't work, I tried my own elf names and that didn't work either, so I typed 'unique baby names' into google and this is where I ended up. i feel like you should know that.
> 
> i should probably also mention that in this chapter maedhros' is very blasé about mental health, nothing too serious or offensive, but it's there. don't get mad. 
> 
> and thank-you for the comments & kudos'! i wasn't even expecting to get one so I'm very appreciative

There’s something about being woken up by the sun piercing itself through his lids and directly into his corneas that just really puts Maedhros in the worst mood. It’s why he keeps 100% sun-proof, blackout-blinds in his bedroom, motorised and timed to rise only  _ after  _ his morning alarm sounds. 

That’s his first clue something’s wrong.

‘Daddy, it’s Christmas.’

‘What the fuck?’ He grunts, voice slurred and heavy with sleep. What is… Why… He doesn’t feel right. Something’s off. There are springs poking into his back, his feet are hanging off the mattress and it smells like milk. He tries to lift his head but there’s a crick in his neck and something heavy sprawled on top of him. 

‘What the fuck.’ He says again, opens his eyes about as much as the sun's glare allows him to and promptly freezes. Did he go out last night? He doesn’t remember much past ordering himself a sixteen-inch pizza and dozing on his sofa in the wait for it. And yet, that’s definitely a person draped across his chest. He turns his head, and  _ this  _ is definitely  _ not  _ his bedroom.

It isn’t anywhere he recognises, in fact. 

He can say categorically, with absolute certainty, that he doesn’t know  _ anyone  _ who lives in a place like this. He’d remember the peeling blue wallpaper and woodchip ceiling if he did. There are clothes littered all across the carpeted-floor, a laundry basket balanced precariously on top of an antique exercise bike and an assortment of mugs, coca-cola cans and empty plates on the bedside table near his head. 

‘Daddy you said the bad word.’

He jerks his head back around with his heart feeling like it’s beating in his throat, ‘What the  _ fuck…’ _

‘You said it again.’

There’s a child. A tiny, real-life, breathing child perched above him. It’s looking back at him with the biggest brown eyes he’s ever seen, through a wild mane of dark curls that cover half its face. It’s talking to him, he thinks, though he can’t say for sure because the absurdity of the situation he’s just found himself in is taking up all the brain-space he has left. Just where in the fucking abyss  _ is he _ ?

Eru’s sake. Maedhros  _ never  _ hooks up with people who’ve got kids. It’s a  _ rule _ . An important, necessary rule to help him avoid situations just like this one. And he certainly,  _ one-hundred _ - _ per-cent _ , never, ever,  _ ever _ … chooses to spend the night on bedsheets bought from Target. 

Eru’s balls, he wishes he could remember last night. 

He tries to get a better look at the other adult in the room, steadfastly avoiding the bug-eyed stare of the infant next to him, in hopes that it may at least go  _ some way _ to explaining  _ something.  _ But all he can see is a patch of bronzed skin and a mass of dark braids spread across his chest like some highly intricate and horribly itchy blanket. 

Did he drink last night? He doesn’t  _ feel  _ like he did, and ever since he passed his late twenties he’s always been able to feel it. For at least the two days after, besides. He feels no headache, no nausea - barring the knot in his stomach - and only the standard measure of morning breath. He checks his faculties; sight is good, no black spots, clouded vision - he can count five fingers on his right hand. Smell is, well there’s the strong odour of his own breath and something he identifies as sour milk but, to his knowledge, that isn’t a sign of any serious head injury he might have had. And the snores coming from whoever’s drooling on his left nipple are loud enough for him to be certain that his hearing is just fine.

He wriggles his toes and tries to lift his legs, hopes to figure out a way to slide out and make a pronto escape, but accidentally knees his new bed-friend in the process. 

‘Okay, okay, ‘m’up,’ the faceless mountain of hair says, voice low and gravelly, warm and slow with sleep, ‘M’up.’

Maedhros moves as they move, lifting himself onto his elbows as the stranger uses his body to push himself upright. The kid, who he’s been trying to forget was  _ right there,  _ watching him in that weird, unblinking way under-sixes do, thankfully crawls further down the bed and turns it’s attention to the other adult. 

There’s a handful of seconds, where the kid is babbling so loudly and incomprehensibly with words like “Christmas” and “presents” and “Daddy said fuck again”, that Maedhros thinks he has a chance to bolt. He’s ready to do exactly that when the stranger turns around and Maedhros nigh-on whites out instead.

It’s Fingon. 

He’s in bed with Fingon. 

He’s a little older, faint lines cluster at the corners of his eyes and he doesn’t look so much like a stiff wind might blow him over anymore. His hair is different too; the braids fall past his shoulders and they’re decorated with beads and gold criss-cross ties, not like the left-to-nature style Maedhros had known him to prefer once upon a time. But there’s no mistaking it, it’s definitely him.

What in the  _ fuck  _ is going on?

Fingon doesn’t look too surprised to find him there. In fact, he’s smiling at him. Smiling like this is all a completely normal set of circumstances and the world  _ hasn’t  _ just upended itself onto turquoise paisley bed sheets in fuck if he knows where. The kid is screeching and bouncing on his legs and Fingon doesn’t even look fazed by the fact that he’s being assailed with bony elbows and knees, almost like he’s accustomed to the plight. 

‘Go and get your brother first.’ Fingon laughs, lifting the still squawking child from his lap and onto the floor where it immediately runs out of the room and in search of a brother. Because apparently there’s more than one child in this house where he is. With Fingon. 

Maedhros sits silently in a stupor as it all happens, inner monologue not straying far from a repetitive string of “How Fingon” and “Why Fingon” and somehow manages to sit perfectly still when the man himself leans over and presses a hot, sour-breathed kiss to his lips and says, ‘Merry Christmas, gorgeous.’ 

He kisses him again and rests his head underneath his chin so that his hair scratches at his jawline. Maedhros still doesn’t move, he’s not entirely sure that he  _ can.  _

The kid comes back in carrying a doll almost the same size as she is. The thing is obviously unreasonably heavy for a toy, she’s dragging one of her legs behind herself in a very theatrical limp as she tries to avoid standing on onesie-clad plastic feet that drag along the floor with her, and Maedhros doesn’t think her heavy panting is as much of an act he’d first assumed it was.

Then Fingon jumps off him, thank Eru, and in a flurry of movement that Maedhros doesn’t altogether follow, he pulls the doll into his own arms and kisses the top of a fluffy head, ‘Emelle, what’ve we told you about picking Ennio up when there are no grown-ups around?’

Oh. It’s not a doll. 

‘You told me to get my brother?’ the kid says, unfazed by the reprimand. Fingon barks out a laugh then folds his lips into his mouth like he’s trying to hold it back.

‘I meant Elias.’ He says through an ill-concealed grin, ‘You know, the one who can get up and walk by himself?’

Which means there’s another one. 

Maedhros has woken up in a house with Fingon and three kids and he is the _only_ _one_ who seems to think that this is not fucking normal. 

He can’t do this. Not today. He has a flight to catch to Gondolin. 

Fuck.

He has a flight to catch to Gondolin.

He throws the covers from his legs and bounds gracelessly off the bed, nearly face-planting the floor in the process. 

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Fingon frowns at him in the midst of his disoriented confusion, then smirks and raises an eyebrow, nodding pointedly towards his crotch, ‘Want to cover up before you leave your kids with lasting trauma?’

Maedhros looks down and gives himself a headrush from bending himself in half so fast. Cupping his cock, ineffectively, with one hand, he grabs the first pair of pants he spots on the floor and scrambles into them.

Fingon only snorts at his sad state and carries the baby out of the room with smiling lips pressed to its head. 

What in the fuck is happening?

It doesn’t matter. He decides. He’ll figure out who laced his pizza with mojo and paid his ex-boyfriend to get in on the act while he’s lying on a beach in Gondolin. He’s not staying here a single second longer. 

It will have to be a few seconds longer... He can’t find even one item of his own clothing, no matter how many spins he takes around the room. He’s obviously going to have to settle for something of Fingon’s, but nearly everything he picks up has a stain or a hole, or words written across the front like “Best Husband In The World”

A squeal from outside the door reminds him that it really doesn’t fucking matter what he’s wearing so long as he’s wearing it  _ away  _ from this house of nightmares. And so he throws on the next T-shirt that looks large enough to stretch over his shoulders and books it out of the bedroom door, tripping over his own feet and almost colliding into the back of Fingon as he does. 

‘Decided not to go balls out for Christmas Day after all?’ Fingon smiles over his shoulder with one corner of his lips, dragging his eyes down Maedhros’ body much too comfortably for his liking before murmuring a quiet, ‘Maybe later.’ That Maedhros pretends he didn’t hear. 

There are three kids. Fingon’s still holding one of them and the other two - the first kid he saw, and a new one wearing pyjamas with stegosaurus spikes and a tail attached to the bottom - are starting to turn their focus on him. Maedhros sees the set of stairs ahead and is about to make tracks before the sprogs can reach him when Fingon grips his upper arm and stares at him, expression deathly serious. 

Maedhros stops and thinks: This is it. This is where Fingon realises that he’s not whoever in the Halls he thinks he is, asks him what the fuck he’s doing in his house on Christmas Day and the world will finally make sense again. 

Instead what Fingon says is, ‘Coffee,’ and then ‘Strong.’

Maedhros stares.

‘And dippy eggs.’ The first kid pipes up from where it’s managed to sneak up and wrap a bony arm around one of his knees. 

The second kid - with the tail - picks up on this idea immediately, starting up a shrill, bewildering chant of “Dippy Eggs”. All without pronouncing the g’s or d’s. And whilst Maedhros is trying to kick off the limpet attached to his leg without causing a physical injury to it, Fingon looks at him directly, places a hand on his shoulder and with a solemn nod says, ‘And dippy eggs.’ 

He can do little more than nod back robotically until Fingon drops the eye-contact, Kid-One releases his leg and he can dodge out of the way of the two fat little hands stretching out towards him because apparently, even the damn baby is in on the joke. 

He runs down the stairs without so much as a backwards glance. Unfortunately, that means he’s looking straight ahead and doesn’t have the luck to miss the sight of cheap red tinsel wrapped around the bannister, or the yellow fairy lights it’s combined with, all of which make holding on for any kind of support while he takes two steps at a time impossible. He reaches the bottom, spins once, then again and finds himself standing in a sitting room with foil decorations hanging from the ceiling and tinsel pinned over every frame, shelf and light switch. 

There’s a red sofa in the middle of the room, a blue woollen throw draped over the top cushions and an armchair that might have been picked up from a kerb at some point. A Christmas tree stands in the corner, lit up with multicoloured lights, mismatched baubles and a throw-up of even more tinsel along the bottom branches. Underneath it there are three small mounds of presents, each wrapped in different coloured paper and one lousily wrapped bike leaning against the wall - he can see the front wheel through a rip in the paper. There’s a fireplace with no fire and five stockings hanging from it in size order. Maedhros feels sick. There’s even a plate with cookie crumbs and a half-drunken glass of milk on the shabby coffee table. It’s all so horribly domestic he can’t help but curl his lip in judgement. So this is where Fingon ended up after they broke up? He wonders if he should feel guilty about it, clearly life hasn’t been too good to him since.

It takes him another minute to find the front door, then one more to find the key to open it. By this time he’s starting to panic, afraid of the squawking voices and footsteps that are only getting closer. He yanks it open with too much force and hurls himself outside with a vigorous sprint Amras would have been proud of. Only…

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.’

He hadn’t thought so far ahead. Hadn’t thought to ask Fingon where he was and how to get away from it, and  _ now  _ he’s standing in a snow-covered, hatchback-lined suburban fucking nightmare with no shoes and not the slightest indication as to where to go from here. He looks back at the house, semi-detached, decent sized-front yard but crappy candy-cane shaped lights thrown over a stack of twigs that Fingon has mistaken for a bush. Wonders if he owns a car and makes what is probably a terrible, but necessary decision. 

He creeps back up the path, slides back through the door and hunts around the side table for something that looks like car keys, then smiles and thanks his own cleverness when he finds them. At least, that is, until he’s standing in the middle of the street with the keys in his hand and a  _ minivan  _ flashing its lights at him. 

A minivan. 

Fingon owns a minivan. 

Well.

It’s not as though he has any other choice. He’d not had the sense to look for his phone before and he’s sure as shit not going back upstairs to look for it now. He’ll have Mairon arrange a car service to send it back today, as soon as he gets back, in fact. Fingon won’t even know it’s missing. 

He climbs into the front seat with a wrinkled nose and the sudden urge to wash his hands. It smells like Cheetos and tree-shaped air freshener inside. There are three car seats on the backseat, all different sizes and all with various coloured stains and crumbs across them. He doesn’t dare look down at the seat he’s already sitting on. He really doesn’t need to know, he assures himself with a gulp. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


He drives for over an hour without recognising anything and when he finally does, it doesn’t exactly fill him with the sort of relief he’d hoped. It’s the Helcaraxe freeway that takes him through Alqualonde, and whilst he’s glad to know that it’s a straight, but long drive home now, he doesn’t feel so reassured. Exactly how did he travel this far away from Formenos without remembering any of it? A cold feeling prickles at the back of his neck at the thought. 

It takes three more hours for him to spot the slanted tip of Himring sticking out above the skyline and with a last forty-minutes breaking all the laws of traffic, the minivan finally sputters to a concluding stop in his home’s parking lot. Maedhros is going to throw himself to the ground and kiss the heated tiles when he gets there. No doubt he’s missed his flight by now and probably the two after, but he’ll book another one, be halfway there by evening and in a blissful state of pretending that this morning had never fucking happened. 

Gothmog is standing by the entrance, phone in one hand and a smoke in the other, he’s never been so happy to see the miserable bastard in the whole five years he’s known him.

‘Residents only.’ he says as Maedhros approaches, he might even let him have the rest of the day off. Paid, of course, and - Wait. What?

‘Residents only.’ the doorman says again, giving Maedhros the briefest once-over before turning his attention back to his phone. His smile freezes. Residents only? What is he talking about? The sight of his own bare feet on the frost-bitten concrete catches his eye and comprehension dawns on him like a swathe of light. Of course. He’s just rolled in driving a shitty minivan, wearing shitty clothes, no shoes and probably looking like he’s just taken a nosedive into the nearest hedge. He doesn’t even recognise him. 

‘No. Look,’ he says, tapping lightly on Gothmogs arm and taking another step towards the doors - his shower is just one sweet elevator ride away, ‘It’s me, Maedhros. You don’t even want to know about the morning I’ve just had -’

Gothmog puts an arm out in front and stops him from going any further, ‘Don’t care who you are, pal. I said residents only.’

‘What are you doing?’ Maedhros frowns and tries to step around but he’s blocked by Gothmog, who is definitely paying more attention now but is still acting like he doesn’t know who he is despite the fact that he’s looking  _ right at him, _ ‘Let me go inside.’

‘Did you not hear me? Residents on-’

‘-Residents only! Yes! I heard!’ Maedhros snaps, ‘I  _ am  _ a resident!’ 

He’s not doing this today. Nope. 

He takes a deep breath, tries to count to ten in the same way he used to teach Celegorm and Caranthir when they were younger, and pinches the bridge of his nose before trying again, ‘Look,’ he starts, ‘I’ve had a really,  _ really,  _ rough fucking morning and I’m not in the mood fo-’

He clenches his fists and has to take two steps backwards when a meaty paw is pressed against his chest. 

‘Get out of here before I start calling the cops,’ Gothmog says, then points to the parking lot behind him, ‘And take that piece of shit with you.’

Maedhros glares, tries to figure out if his doorman has suddenly developed a really shitty sense of humour or if he’s in the middle of a serious mental break. He knows one thing though, if his hand touches him like that again Maedhros is going to break every finger on the damn thing. 

‘You hear me?’ Gothmog continues, ‘Get lost’

He’s serious. 

‘You’re serious.’ Maedhros says. Shit, this guy is so fucking fired, ‘This is  _ my  _ building! I own the damn thing! I  _ built  _ it!’

‘Sure thing, pal.’ Gothmog rolls his eyes and Eru, is he lucky that it’s Maedhros standing in front of him and not one of his brothers. He turns around, takes a few steps back and tries to calm down before he does something he’ll regret. Or Gothmog will. 

He leans against Fingon’s shitty minivan, contemplating smashing either his own head or his doorman’s into the passenger side door when a sleek, red Ferrari Portofino pulls into the space directly in front of the building. Maedhros gawks as Mairon steps out wearing a suit that he can see even from this distance cost the kid at least two months' wage. He doesn’t even have the mental capacity to figure out how he landed a  _ Ferrari _ . It doesn’t matter. It’s the face of someone he  _ knows  _ wouldn’t have the first idea on how to carry out a practical joke, 

‘Mairon.’ he says, hurrying over to fall into step beside him, ‘I need you to call that car service we used a while back and have them take this-”, he jabs a thumb at the minivan, “-back to uh...back to... I’m going to need you to find an address for me as well, and-’

‘Do I know you?’ Mairon, even though he must stand more than a foot shorter than him, manages to look down his nose as though Maedhros is a dirty shoe shiner spitting on his Louis Vuittons. 

This isn’t happening.

‘Do you  _ know  _ me?’ he laughs, more than a little hysterically, he can’t believe what he’s hearing, ‘Do you...  _ Maedhros.  _ Maedhros  _ fucking  _ Fëanorian, why am I even having to tell you this?’

‘Want me to call the cops, Boss?’ Gothmog asks, coming to stand besides Mairon and not even bothering to look at Maedhros again. 

Boss? He’s calling Mairon  _ boss  _ now? He’s done. He’s so fucking done. He doesn’t know if the entire fucking world is in on whatever kind of prank this is but he’s done. 

‘That’s probably for the best’ Mairon replies, eyeing his bare feet with blatant disgust.

‘What the fuck is going on?!’ Maedhros roars, patience finally snapping, ‘Himring is  _ my  _ building!’

‘The hell is Himring?’ Gothmog mumbles unconcernedly to Mairon, not quiet enough that Maedhros doesn’t hear and  _ see  _ the way Mairon shrugs and looks at him like he’s reconsidering the police and thinking about a psychiatric hospital instead.

‘This is Himring!’ he shouts, pointing to the building in front of them, ‘It says it right there! Right there in...in…chrome...letters’ he swallows a mouthful of saliva as it wells up in his mouth. He feels sick. And dizzy. Eru, he’s going to pass out, he’s really about to bite the concrete. 

Why does it say Angband at the top of his tower?

It feels like he’s stood up too fast, like his head is spinning and the world is tilting and he’s on the very precipice of consciousness. 

‘Get rid of him.’ Mairon says with finality, turning on his heels away from him. 

He’s hallucinating. He’s having some kind of drug-induced hallucinatory break and that’s why he can’t remember last night either. Maybe Maglor found him again, peer-pressured him into trying some new pill where he proceeded to blackout and this is one of the side-effects. 

Thinking that he might actually be sick, he turns around ready to empty his stomach contents right there on Fingon’s stupid minivan, but then he sees a memory from last night that he absolutely  _ does  _ remember. 

The man is standing under the same street light he was standing under last night. Wearing clothes from the Dark Ages and a shit-eating grin across his face. Maedhros knows instinctively that this is somehow his doing. 

He strides over to him, ‘What did you do?’

‘Maitimo.’ he greets him with that deep, terrifying voice of his, how he knows  _ that  _ name despite Maedhros taking pains to make sure it was kept out of the realms of public knowledge is the least of his concerns, ‘You look distressed, my friend.’

‘Distressed?’ he laughs humorlessly, he thinks distressed is probably the most inconsiderable of expressions he’s wearing. Distressed doesn’t even  _ begin  _ to encompass how he’s feeling right now, ‘The whole world has lost its collective mind and apparently,  _ I’m  _ the only one still playing with a full deck!’

‘I did warn you.’ The man says, his strange, Stygian eyes seem to both watch him and look straight through him at the same. 

‘Warn me of what?’ he replies absently, a little more level-headedly, distracted by the weirdness of what he’s seeing and not understanding. 

‘You brought this on yourself.’

That was what he said last night. Maedhros had thought it an empty threat, something to try and scare him. He hadn’t even remembered until just now. Still, that doesn’t mean things make anymore sense. What exactly did he bring on himself? He doesn’t even know what’s happening. 

‘So… What? I get myself a starring spot in your bad books and you put me on some kind of...premium acid trip?’

‘This is called a glimpse,’ he says, like that’s supposed to mean anything to him. Maedhros waits for him to continue with a ‘go on’ gesture and a bewildered stare, but he only laughs. Or does something Maedhros thinks is  _ intended  _ to be a laugh, it sounds much more ominous, ‘You should count yourself lucky, Nelyafinwë. Most humans are never given a gift like this.’

Maedhros watches him wide-eyed and waits. Waits for any of those words to start making a whit of sense. Finally, he snaps, ‘I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. I don’t even know who you are.’

‘My name is Mandos, I’m here on behalf of The Company’ he says, holding his hand out like a door to door salesman. Madhros takes it automatically and the next thing he knows he’s standing back at the minivan with  _ Mandos  _ holding the passenger door open for him, ‘Come and take a ride with me.’

He does, because honestly, Maedhros has no idea what else he  _ can  _ do. They sit in silence as Mandos drives, and Maedhros theorizes about what he means. It could be any company, he thinks, he has a whole list of people who would happily fuck up his life. Bauglir springs to mind. He doesn’t know how he’ll have pulled it off but-

‘This goes a little higher than Melkor Bauglir, Nelyafinwë.’ 

Maedhros doesn’t jump at the mind-reading. Not physically, anyway. Mostly because his body’s been jittering like a pulled guitar string since he woke up in his exes bedroom with a kid calling him Daddy. 

‘Who then?’ he asks, ‘What company?’

‘The Company.’ he repeats and when Maedhros stares at him with an expression that must look just as dumb as it feels, Mandos points upwards, ‘ _ The Company.’ _

‘So,’ Maedhros swallows on a dry mouth, tries to formulate the words but his brain is shooting out so many at once it’s hard to put them under any control, ‘What is that, like…  _ Eru _ ? Are you an angel? Or something?’ He can feel the heat rising in his cheeks just saying it, it’s so ridiculous. It’s so utterly, utterly ridiculous. And yet, he can think of no answer that  _ doesn’t  _ defy any logic of reality he knows.

‘Or something.’ Mandos shrugs in contemplation, clearly finding the description passably fitting.

‘I’ve gone mad.’

Out of all of his brothers, he thought he’d be the last. They’ve never been the best-balanced family, and he’s suspected for a while that he not quite as well put together as he lets people believe he is, but  _ this?  _ Eru’s sack, he hopes it’s a dream. 

‘It is real, Maitimo.’ is all Mandos says, all the warning Maedhros gets before he’s looking at something entirely inhuman. Mandos’ already dark skin has turned to jet-black ink, swirling and moving across the contours of his body and face as though made of water or vapour. It’s like looking into a void. There’s nothing there, an absolute absence of everything and just looking at it fills Maedhros with a bone-deep feeling of despair. And then with the next blink he’s human again, the hollow feeling is gone, and Maedhros is left to remind himself that he has to breathe. 

‘This is a glimpse.’ Mandos says again when Maedhros recovers just enough that his heavy breathing isn’t the only sound he can hear.

‘And what is that?’ He swipes two clammy, trembling hands down his face, ‘A glimpse of  _ what?’ _

‘What could have been. What might yet be…’ He waves a hand in the air, ‘The ‘what-ifs’ of our existence.’

Obviously. It all makes sense now. 

Maedhros is two seconds away from screaming. 

He doesn’t, but only because if there’s one thing growing up as the eldest of seven cantankerous, anarchical little arseholes has taught him, it’s the ability to not completely lose his shit in times of absolute desperation, ‘And how do I get out of it?’

‘That’s something only you can figure out, son of Fëanor.’

Son of Fëanor. Eru it’s like he’s walked straight out of the 5th century. He almost rolls his eyes, ‘No.’ He says, sitting up straight, ‘No, I can’t I. Look, how much do you want? Just say a number and it’s done-’

Mandos cuts him off with that booming laugh that is the absolute most terrifying thing he’s ever heard, more so than the sound of Celegorms lawyer asking if he’s got a minute again, ‘Your currency holds no value to me, Nelyafinwë .’

‘Fuck.’ he stares up at the fluffy ceiling of the minivan - no car top should be described as ‘fluffy’, ‘How long? How long will I have to do this, this ‘glimpse’?’

‘As long as it takes.’

He grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut and speaks slowly, ‘As long as it takes for  _ what?’ _

‘For you to figure it out.’ Now there is definitely humour in his voice, ‘And for you, my friend, that time may be considerable.’

Maedhros groans and slumps back down in his seat. He looks out of the window and sees that they’re nearing the end of the Helcaraxe freeway, even though that should be impossible because they haven’t been driving for long enough to be back on the other side of Beleriand already. 

‘Everything’s possible.’ Mandos says, before taking his hand and placing a small, silver bicycle bell in the centre of his palm. Maedhros stares down at it in confusion. 

‘What is it?’ he asks, ‘Does it do something? Should I ring it if-’ He looks up and stops, Mandos isn’t there anymore. The van’s parked up in the breakdown lane and the keys to the ignition are lying on the driver's seat. He looks around, with one last surge of hope that this will all turn out to be some over-ambitious prank, aims to spot someone he knows, laughing at him from behind a traffic sign. But there’s nothing and no-one and the only place left to go is back to Fingon. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maedhros makes his way back to Fingon.
> 
> warning for gratuitous use of italics, ellipses and the word fuck.

After Maedhros hits the GPS just the right number of times to make the damned thing turn on, he snags the first bit of good luck he’s had all day: a saved location entitled ‘Home’. Which absolves him from the ordeal of trying to navigate his way through a universe he doesn’t know, to a place he doesn’t know, in a decrepit old minivan with manual steering. 

Except, it turns out that he  _ does  _ know the place. In a roundabout sort of way, at least, because he finds that ‘Home’ is only five blocks away from the house he grew up in.

Which means he’s in Tirion. 

Of course, he’d figured he must be close to the city the minute he saw the Helcaraxë the first time round, but he hadn’t thought…

_ Tirion.  _

He can’t quite bring himself to believe that there's a version of him who ended up back there. This is the first time that he’s - the  _ real  _ Maedhros, that is - has been back to Tirion in eleven years and if there was anywhere else, absolutely  _ anywhere _ else to go, then he would go there and wait this ‘glimpse’ out. But there isn’t. So the only option he’s left with is to play house with an ex he’d hoped to never have to face, in a city he never wanted to go back to. 

He’s doing fine, at first. He drives through streets and passes places he’d forgotten were, at one point, a part of his life; like his old primary school and the poorly maintained park he used to drag his brothers to on the weekends,  _ literally  _ drag when it came to Curufin. He passes the convenience shop where his fake I.D worked for the first time, and then the one two streets further down where it definitely didn’t. 

Then the GPS directs him towards two dead-end cul-de-sacs and through a cemetery before shutting down completely. No amount of thumping the plastic piece of shit with his fist brings it back to life, either. 

He has no idea where he is. Not so much as a clue as to whether he should be going left, right or straight on. At this point his only hope is for Fingon to have sent out a search party for him before he has to spend the night sleeping in the minivan. But being that he hasn’t seen a single other person on the roads all night, the odds don’t appear to be in his favour. 

He doesn’t know how much longer he drives around before he sees them - long enough that he’s begun to chew on the inside of his lips, an old nervous habit of his that hasn’t appeared in near a decade. There’s a row of houses up ahead, nicer than the ones he’d found himself standing in front of this morning and obviously owned by the kind of people who don’t buy their furniture from IKEA or drive minivans. Four people stand outside the corner house, loading gift bags and brightly wrapped presents into the back of a Toyota Prius, whilst the biggest, fluffiest white dog he’s ever seen bounces around between their legs. If it wasn’t for the collar Maedhros might have mistaken it for a polar bear. 

‘Excuse me?’ He calls out, pulling up behind them and winding down his window.  _ Winding down his window -  _ not even a button to do it for him, ‘Can anyone point me the way to Two Trees avenue?’

But his voice turns shaky and barely even audible by the time he’s finished speaking. The world has flipped itself upside down once again. 

There’s no way. No way he’s looking at who he thinks he is. Impossible.

‘The missing husband returns,’ Celegorm says with a toothy grin as he strides over and folds his arms along the window trim, ‘What was it then? Secret second family or nervous breakdown?’

Behind him, Caranthir stands with an armful of boxes wrapped in Christmas paper and glowers at Maedhros around them, ‘The fuck have you been?’

‘You’re in so much trouble.’ A woman wearing a Santa hat and a face full of freckles says, smiling like they actually know one another. 

Maedhros is too dazed to attempt any kind of reply, instead he gawks dumbly between his brothers, unable to wrap his mind around what he’s seeing. It’s as though he’s looking at two strangers wearing his brothers’ faces. The difference, whilst outwardly being barely noticeable at all, is at the very same time so stark that it sends his head spinning somewhere to the west. How is it that they look so healthy and…  _ normal.  _

‘Breakdown.’ Celegorm nods decisively, pulling away from the van, ‘Fucking called it.’

His brothers and the woman he doesn’t know start talking between themselves like they’ve forgotten he’s even there, something about tact and perceptiveness and  _ reading the room, Tyelko _ . 

He’s only half listening. 

The fourth person with them; a man of similar height to himself but twice as wide, with tattoos down both arms and up his neck, takes Celegorms place at the window. He feels oddly familiar as he leans one burly forearm on the van, like Maedhros knows him from somewhere, ‘Rough day?’ He asks, looking him up and down with an expression that can only be described as  **Concerned.**

He supposes he can’t blame him. He’s managed to give himself a once over while he’s been driving in circles around Tirion and he’ll readily admit that he’s not looking too great. No shoes, purple sweatpants and a rainbow-striped t-shirt that says Dad Goals across the front and fits like a crop top. He’s been avoiding his own eye contact in the dashboard mirror, but he can  _ feel  _ the grime on his face and the maniacal expression he’s wearing.

Maedhros all at once feels like crying. Because yes. Yes it’s been a rough fucking day. The roughest of days. He’s fucking overwhelmed is what he is. He nods, still not able to use his words due to an inability to extricate his tongue from the roof of his mouth and his gaze flits back to his brothers. They’re still bickering, though the topic has moved on from sensitivity to whether Celegorm should get custody of their middle child if Fingon and Maedhros get a divorce. 

Maedhros waits for the inevitable. The punches thrown and the unpretended professions of hate. But they don’t so much as raise their voices or sling a single malicious insult. The whole thing is rather good-natured, in fact, if not a little too sincere on Celegorm’s part. 

‘Hey, uh.’ The guy starts, then looks over his shoulder at the others, whatever expression he’s wearing makes them quieten down and turn their attention back to him, ‘You want to come in for a drink?’ he says to Maedhros ‘We’ve just come to see Haleth and Moryo anyway. Haven’t we, Tyelko?’

‘We literally  _ just  _ left - Ow, shit’ Celegorm hisses and rubs at his side, glaring at the man who’s right hand is now placed innocently on his hip. He turns a ridiculously straight face on Maedhros and nods seriously ‘Yes. We have.’ 

‘You look like shit.’ Caranthir grunts and yanks open the driver's side door, ‘Move then, I’m not standing out here all night.’

Haleth, he assumes that must be the woman’s name, tuts at his brother and nudges him out of the way with a sharp elbow, ‘Come on, Nelyafinwë ,’ she says gently, pressing a hand under his arm and tugging him out of his seat with unexpected strength, ‘I’ve still got that rum you bought me for my birthday. You can stay for one before you go home.’

Home, he thinks a little nauseously.

Home where he lives with Fingon and three kids. 

Haleth closes the van door behind him and guides him up the path and through the black front door of the corner house. It’s nice inside, Maedhros observes absently, not much in the way of furnishings - just a large white corner sofa, chrome coffee table and a television mounted on a grey feature wall, there’s stacks of cardboard boxes from the hallway to the sitting room like they’re in the process of moving either in or out, but the place seems clean and sophisticated, even their Christmas tree appears to have a colour scheme, unlike the rainbow throw-up of tinsel dashed over Fingons tree. 

He’s being pushed down by the shoulders to sit and nearly has his legs knocked from underneath him when the not-polar bear barrels past him, performs two ungainly pivots on the sofa, then settles itself into the corner cushion with an oversized tongue hanging from its panting mouth. 

‘Tell your mutt to get off my couch.’ Caranthir scowls at Celegorm whilst his fair-haired brother uses his teeth to tear the lid off a Bud Light, entirely unconcerned.

‘Tell him yourself.’ he says.

‘He’s drooling all over it.’

‘He can’t help it, can he? His tongue’s too big for his yap.’ Celegorm plonks himself down next to the offending mutt and wordlessly offers it a swig from his bottle which, thankfully, it doesn’t seem all that interested in. 

‘Make him sit on the rug like before!’ Caranthir continues, pointing despairingly to the aforementioned rug, where there still sits a bowl of water, presumably from ‘before’. 

‘He didn’t like sitting on the rug, he thinks it’s too scratchy.’

‘He’s a dog! He fell asleep on top of Ammë’s stone pile last week.’

‘You good, Nelyo?’

Maedhros jumps when a small tumbler of rum is placed in his hand and the nameless guy from outside appears next to him, perching on the arm of the sofa. There’s something about the way those words are said that makes Maedhros think about high school and smoking cigarettes behind the sports hall. He looks up at the man’s face again and suddenly it’s like he can see two different versions of him; the one in front of him and another where he’s younger, without tattoos and wearing his hair in short cornrows instead of long locs. 

‘Oromë !’ he blurts out impulsively as it all comes back to him in a wave of memories, ‘You’re Oromë. I uh...I remember. Now.’

_ That’s _ why he seems so familiar. He  _ knows  _ him. They went to the same high school. Oromë was the year above him, but they were on the weightlifting and football team together so they hung around in the same circles for a while. He doesn’t remember ever speaking to him much after high school, last he heard Oromë had gone to a college on the other side of the country, so he wonders how they’re still friends in this world, and how he’s seemingly hooked up with his little brother. 

Oromë eyes someone behind him with The Look again, and two seconds later Maedhros finds himself walled in by the towering figures of his two brothers staring down at him. They’re both wearing matching expressions of worry, it’s the first time he’s ever seen an external similarity between the two, and he feels a sudden onslaught of unwarranted affection that he can’t shake off quick enough. 

‘What’s going on with you then?’ Caranthir demands finally, though there’s a soft edge to his voice that Maedhros hasn’t heard since he was young. 

‘Yeah, you ditch your family on Christmas Day and don’t say a word to anyone about it?’ Celegorms thumb picks worriedly at the damp paper around the glass bottle he’s holding, Maedhros concentrates on watching  _ that  _ so he doesn’t have to look at their faces anymore, ‘Fingon’s called everyone looking for you.’

‘He’s really worried,’ Haleth pipes up from where she's standing behind the sofa, dropping cuts of ham into the polar bear dogs waiting mouth.

‘And pissed. Got really creative with the word fuck.’ Celegorm adds, sounding a little awe-inspired, ‘But like, mostly worried. We all are.’

And Maedhros, well, Maedhros doesn’t know what to say. The truth isn’t going to go down well, it’s only going to have him carted off to the closest psychiatric unit. But he’s never been a very good liar. So he settles for something simple and in between and not necessarily a lie, ‘Just uh. Not feeling like myself. Head’s all…’ he gestures to his head and waves his hand in such a way that might demonstrate what’s going on in there, ‘You know?’

‘Is it work?’ Caranthir asks.

‘Is it Fingon?’ 

Maedhros says nothing but looks at Celegorm. It’s not  _ not  _ Fingon? He supposes Fingon  _ is  _ at the centre of all of this, or at least, it feels that way. Whatever he’s supposed to be figuring out he feels pretty certain that he needs Fingon to do so. Though for the life of him he can’t understand  _ why.  _

‘Hey man, it’s fine’ Celegorm says, crouching down in front of him with what  _ might  _ have been a reassuring smile, had Maedhros not seen one very similar on his brothers face once, right before he headbutted the CEO of Menegroth Inc, ‘We’ve all been there. You know? You wake up one morning and think “is this  _ really  _ my life?”’

‘Tyelko…’

‘You’re lying there, scrolling through Instagram posts showing you everything you’re never gonna have, and it’s like, you realise that this isn’t the life you dreamed of. I mean... You’re in your thirties and you spend your weekends at soft play centres and whatever fast food joint lets the kids eat free. You gotta mortgage to pay, three kids, a bad back, you drive a  _ minivan…’  _

‘Tyelko.’ Oromë scolds, ‘Is there a point to this?’

‘You wanna let me finish?’ Celegorm glares over his shoulder before turning back to Maedhros and resting a hand on his knee, ‘What I’m saying is that suicide rates are really high this time of year-’

‘Eru’s balls, Turko you asshole. ’ Caranthir knocks Celegorm to the side and takes his place crouched in front of him, ‘Look, sometimes it feels like you gave up everything. Like, I don’t know. Like you could have been more than this. But you’ve got to look at what you have, yea? You have a house, a job you love, great kids -’

‘A hot husband?’ Celegorm adds, and Caranthir nods in consensus

‘It’s just the three kids, right?’ Maedhros asks, not able to say with any honesty that he feels  _ better,  _ but he doesn’t necessarily feel worse either. Maybe a little more grounded, ‘And Fingon? He’s my husband.’

‘Just keep saying it over and over’, Oromë smiles.

‘Yeah and you never know, one day you might be able to believe how lucky you are.’ Haleth says.

He’s nearly back in the minivan when Celegorm pulls him to the side, pressing their heads close together and speaking low enough so only Maedhros can hear, ‘Remember last year? When I was… having second thoughts about everything? When I thought… you know when I nearly had that  _ thing  _ with that dancer, Lúthien? Remember what you said to me?’

Maedhros can only shake his head blankly, but Celegorm doesn’t seem concerned.

‘You told me that I shouldn’t go throwing away the best thing that’s ever happened to me just because I was feeling scared about the future. You made me talk all that shit through with O’ and I… If I didn’t have him now I…’ he sighs in a mixture of frustration and emotion and looks Maedhros in the eye with as much sincerity as he’s ever seen on his younger brother, ‘I just mean that it was good advice. And you should listen to it.’

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


He finds his new home eventually, after a carefully phrased question to his brothers on which route he usually takes to get there. One house looks much like the next after driving for an hour past a few hundred of them, but the candy-cane adorned branch pile in the front yard helps him shorten down the search. 

He parks up on the kerb, the same place he found it, and looks up at the house. It’s not so bad, he tells himself, doubtfully. The overgrown ivy at least goes  _ someway  _ to hiding the shade of yellow the exterior is painted in. The windows look new. And the front yard is a decent size, if not a little neglected. He stands in front of the door, the faint sound of children's voices coming through the wood. 

Mandos had called this a glimpse, which suggests he’s not going to be here forever. A glimpse is a quick thing, after all. Maybe if he does a good job with Fingon tonight then by morning he’ll be back in his real life. 

There’s nothing left for it, he decides. If he can face down the likes of Fëanor and Melkor Bauglir without breaking a sweat then Fingon will be a cakewalk. 

His hand shakes as he pushes on the handle.

When he steps inside it’s like walking face-first into a wall of heat. There’s the strong smell of roasted potatoes and something cinnamon that makes his empty stomach groan loudly. He’s  _ almost  _ glad to be inside somewhere warm with food _.  _ That is of course until he finds his legs being beset by small children who are making lots of noise but not actually saying any words that are interpretable. They screech up at him and pull at his sweatpants until he has no choice but to let them tow him along lest they pull a little  _ too  _ much. He’s probably upset Fingon enough already today, he doesn’t want the first thing he sees to be Maedhros with his dick out in the family room. 

Though considering the bedlam he finds when he gets there, chances are he wouldn’t even notice. The entire floor is covered with toys and wrapping paper, there are half-eaten dinner plates on the coffee table and an upturned box of chocolates on the sofa. The television is showing cartoons with the volume at least four notches too loud whilst on the  _ other  _ side of the room, a toy record player blasts out auto-tuned covers of Christmas songs. 

‘Hold on, no. It’s fine he...he’s back.’ Fingon appears in the doorway, using his shoulder to press the phone against his ear and his arms to hold the baby, ‘Yes. Thank you. Bye”

He throws down the phone on the sofa and storms over to him. Tries to, anyway. He’s impeded by the curly-haired kid pushing herself in front and between them on a green bicycle. 

‘Daddy look, I got a bike.’ she says to Maedhros, running over one of his bare feet to illuminate the fact. 

‘-Hey,’ Fingon squats down until he’s eye level with her, ‘Why don’t you finish your picture of sparkle hulk while I talk to Daddy? Yea?’

The kid - Kid One, Maedhros’ mind supplies in place of a name he’d forgotten immediately after hearing it - abandons her quest to make Maedhros feel the bike as much as see it, and runs off somewhere to the left. Kid Two becomes distracted by something under the table and Fingon boxes in the sleeping baby - which looks more like an overdressed ball of dough than anything else - on the small patch of uncluttered sofa by using every cushion in the vicinity. When he’s standing up again he grips Maedhros sharply around the upper arm and hauls him into the kitchen.

‘Where the  _ fuck  _ have you been?’, he spits the second they’re out of earshot, ‘What happened?’

Eru, where does he start? Well, a mystic deity appeared and decided he was going to fuck around with Maedhros’ life and threw him into a doggone parallel universe, so now he’s here with an ex he hasn’t seen in over a decade, living in a house furnished almost entirely from the IKEA catalogue and a bunch of kids who think he’s their Daddy. On top of that, he apparently can’t leave aforesaid universe until he’s figured out the answer to whatever shitty life lesson he’s supposed to be learning. That’s what happened.

‘Uh. Nothing?’ he says instead,

‘You’re not hurt?’ Fingon asks, grinning down at Kid Two when he runs over to show them a lopsided stack of lego bricks and tells them it’s a castle, ‘Are you sick?’

‘No?’ he says again, then hisses in pain as Fingon slugs him in the arm, 

‘Then what the fuck, Maitimo? You realise that it’s Christmas day, right? Do you have  _ any  _ idea what you’ve put us through today? Looks great, kid’ he says to Kid One who’s waving an a3 piece of paper filled with green and purple glitter at them from the living room. He looks back at Maedhros with venom in his eye, ‘You run out on us on - Emelle, you can’t put glitter on the baby - You run out on  _ Christmas morning  _ and you don’t say a single word to anyone about it? I had no idea where you were going, or that you were even going  _ anywhere  _ in the first fucking place for that matter. You just left! Who does that? What kind of person  _ does  _ something like that?’

Maedhros fidgets where he stands and chews at his lips, he hasn’t been scolded like this since he was a teenager. 

‘I called _every one_ _ ,  _ Maitimo. You were gone all day, all fucking day. It’s gone  _ six,  _ I thought something had happened. I thought…’ he stops then and catches a shaking breath, ‘I called the hospitals. And the police. I…’

There are tears in his eyes and his hands are trembling in the fists they make at his sides. He looks sad. And scared. Maedhros is hit with a feeling of overwhelming guilt and no idea what he’s supposed to say to make it better. This isn’t  _ his  _ fault. But he can’t even tell him that. 

‘I’m sorry.’ he says because it feels the most appropriate. And he  _ is  _ sorry. Sorry that the universe chose such a great fucking day to mess with them. But Fingon only glares back, like the apology has just pissed him off even more. 

‘Where were you?’

He shoves his hands in his pockets and feels the smooth metal of the bell Mandos gave him. He should make something up. He could say he went looking for a last-minute gift and got lost. Instead, with the coolness of the bell giving him a burst of inspiration, he says, ‘Formenos.’ 

Fingon was always the most reasonable and non-judgemental person he knew,  _ maybe,  _ he’ll believe him and they can figure this shit out together. 

‘Formenos?’ Fingon whispers bewilderedly, then looks back at him incredulously with a raised eyebrow, ‘Okay so,  _ why  _ did you decide to spend Christmas Day in Formenos instead of with your family?’

‘Because I live there.’

‘What?’

Maedhros takes two steps forward until he’s just a few inches from Fingon and bends his knees just enough so that they’re at eye-level, ‘This isn’t my life, Fingon.’ he says with as much gravity as he can muster, ‘I  _ live  _ in Formenos. Not here.’

‘Don’t,’ Fingon warns, ‘Don’t start. I’m not in the mood for stupid fucking jokes right now, Maitimo. This isn’t funny.’

He storms over to the sink where a mound of dirty dishes spill over and across the counter, essentially turning his back on Maedhros. He follows anyway, taking a grip on the crook of Fingon’s elbow and trying to make him look at him again, ‘Fingon, I’m serious. I woke up this morning  _ here.  _ In your bed. With no idea where I was or how I got there. This  _ isn’t  _ my home, Fingon. My home is in Forme-’

Fingon cuts him off with a soapy hand held up between them. Maedhros can see his nostrils flaring and the motion of teeth grinding at his jaw - a facet that Maedhros remembers, even eleven years on, means it’s time to stop talking if he wants to keep his head on his shoulders.

  
  


‘Those aren’t my kids!’ he cries out regardless, hand pointing in the general direction of where Jingle Bells is being loudly and confidently sung by two people who have very different ideas of what the lyrics are, neither of who are right. Fingon  _ has  _ to believe him, he’s probably the only person who can help him, ‘I don’t even  _ have  _ kids. I’m not a...a Daddy. And me and you?’ he uses his hand to point wildly between the two of them, ‘We’re not married.’

Fingon slams a brown-crusted pan down into the sink so hard that Maedhros is surprised to see the plates underneath it haven’t been smashed, ‘Do you  _ actually  _ think that you’re being funny right now? Because I’m not laughing this time. I’m pissed, Maitimo. I’m really, really fucking pissed. I mean it this time. Like, I’m actually really fucking mad at you.’

He says it like Maedhros might not believe that he could be. Like Fingon being mad at him isn’t something that often happens. Maedhros decides to shut up. It was a long shot and it’s not working. He’ll have to find something else. He shoves his hands back inside the pockets of his sweatpants and keeps his head bowed as Fingon reads him the riot act. 

‘...and what was I supposed to say to her? She asked where her Daddy was and…’

The bell makes itself known to him again. He feels across the smooth metal with his thumb, there doesn’t appear to be anything special about it. It seems like it’s just a bell, but Mandos must have given it to him for a reason. Maybe it’s supposed to work like a kind of “Ring-In-Case-Of-Emergency” type of deal. A way out, maybe. He figures that he’s got nothing  _ else  _ to lose, seeing as he doesn’t even have his own life anymore. He presses on the little clapper, listens to the clink and waits...

‘- _ he  _ just wanted dippy eggs, he was more excited about them than the presents and you  _ know  _ I can never get them right-’

He tries again. 

‘-think I might have thrown them away when I was picking the paper up so now there’s no batteries for-’

And again.

‘-just so fucking mad at you right now I could honestly-’

Two more times and then a third. 

‘The fuck are you doing, Russandol? What is that?’ Fingon snaps, glaring down at the bell that he’d ended up pulling from his pocket in his urgency. There’s a repetitive, squeaking sound slowly getting louder and before Maedhros can think up an answer, Kid One appears in the kitchen on her green bike, the incredible hulk on circular plastic across the handlebars, and parks herself at his legs. Maedhros panics and falls backwards into the wall, which gives the kid an opportunity to pluck the bell from his grip. She looks at it curiously, dings it once, then plonks it into the purple basket fastened to the front.

‘Thank you, Daddy.’ she says, before reversing back into the sitting room with her feet pushing along the floor. 

‘That’s mine.’ he protests weakly, looking to Fingon for help, ‘She took my bell.’

Fingon glowers, then seems to lose the energy to say whatever it was he’d wanted to. He sits down heavily at what Maedhros assumes is intended to be a dining table, though there’s not much room left for dining. It’s covered with paperwork, baby’s bottles and four dead plants. There are five chairs in three different colours, and one high chair. They don’t fit around the table properly, and one is left slightly off to the side. Fingon sits on it, his elbow on the table and his head in his hand, ‘You missed  _ Christmas,  _ Mae. You spent  _ hours  _ last night putting that bike together for Emelle and you weren’t even around to see her face when she opened it.’

‘I’m sorry.' he says, and this time it sounds like he really means it. Which he supposes he does, in a way. Not that any of this is his fault, but seeing Fingon like that is… well he’s not made of stone. He might not want to be here but that doesn’t mean he wants to  _ upset  _ Fingon in any way either. 

‘Is it me?’ Fingon asks quietly, staring down at Maedhros’ dirty feet like he doesn’t want to look up and see the answer, ‘Has something changed? With... with us? Did I do something?’

‘No.’ Maedhros says immediately. Eru, it could  _ never  _ be Fingon’s fault, ‘No it’s nothing like that.’

‘Swear?’ Fingon says.

‘Swear,’

‘And you’re definitely okay?’ He asks, standing up and walking over to him. He slides one arm around Maedhros’ waist and puts his other hand on his face, turning his head slightly to the right and then back again like he’s checking for signs of damage, ‘Right? You’re good?’

‘Yep.’ Maedhros’ is frozen and stiff in his hold, unable to move his arms to return the embrace like he probably should. Thankfully Fingon pulls away before he notices. 

‘Okay. Then we’re okay.’ He nods, then looks Maedhros up and down like he’s only just clocked what he looks like, ‘What in the… You need to get changed. I don’t care how funny you think it is, you’re not going out wearing that. And shower, you smell like Turko’s laundry basket. But hurry up or we’ll be late for the party, I’ll get the kids ready.’

What.

‘Party?’ he says, a lilt of panic edging into his voice, ‘No. No, I can’t go to a party right now.’

Fingon scowls at him. Reconciliation forgotten. ‘Don’t start. I’m still pissed with you.’

‘I’m. I’m not _ starting _ .’ How does he put “Twelve hours ago I had a whole other life and I’m really not up to partying with parallel universe people” in simpler terms? ‘I’m tired.’

‘Eru’s sake.  _ Fine.’  _ Fingon growls and looks up to the ceiling like he’s done. He  _ looks  _ like he’s done, Maedhros thinks when he turns a frankly terrifying death-glare on him, even more done than he was fifteen minutes ago, ‘Fine. But if you’re staying home then so are the kids. They won’t mind, I’m sure they’d rather spend the night with the Dad they haven’t seen all day anyway.’

Maedhros nods and jabs a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the stairs, ‘I’ll jump in the shower.’

‘That would be great, thanks.’ Fingon says with a mock smile, as the sudden ear-splitting sound of a hungry baby letting everybody know that it’s woken up sounds into the kitchen. Maedhros prays to the stars that he isn’t expected to play Daddy just yet. 

Thankfully Fingon walks over to the sofa and picks the baby up without a word, and Maedhros takes the stairs three steps at a time. 

‘You should rinse and repeat with the soap, too!’ Fingon yells from behind him.

  
  
When he reaches the top there’s a wall in front of him filled with picture frames. He’d missed it that morning - and thank Eru for small miracles because if he  _ had  _ seen it, he might have spontaneously combusted. Directly at his eye-level, there’s a photograph of Fingon and himself, both looking like they’re still in their early twenties. They’re wearing suits and standing in the doorway of a building he doesn’t recognise, Fingon is smiling at the camera and Maedhros is smiling down at Fingon. There’s blurred confetti surrounding them and he realises that it must be a picture from their wedding day. The one he technically never had. Eru, just how young were they when they married, Maedhros doesn’t look like he can be any older than twenty-four and Fingon looks younger still. 

Another shows a staged family photo. Fingon and Maedhros sitting in front of a white background with only two kids - one on each knee. There’s another of Maedhros and his brothers,  _ all  _ of his brothers, he’s wearing the same suit as the wedding photo and the seven of them are all clearly a little worse for wear, even though Amrod and Amras can only be sixteen or seventeen at most. There’s tons of photographs of the kids, and of Fingon and himself. Maedhros is in nearly all of them, wearing some variety of plaid or denim, or both at the same time. He even spots one of himself and the twins standing outside a tent with their arms around each other, seemingly on a camping trip. Maedhros would  _ never  _ willingly go camping. This person isn’t another version of himself, he’s a complete stranger. He doesn’t know how he’s ever going to pull this off. 

He finds the right bedroom as soon as he turns to look, but only because the door has been left open and the image of those turquoise bed sheets is still very much a prominent part of his hazy memories of this morning. Mercifully, the bedroom also has an ensuite, and a pile of towels that don’t look  _ too  _ economy, there’s a decent-sized bath and even though the shower is combined, it all at least looks clean. Howbeit cramped. He has cupboards bigger than this back in Formenos. 

When he stands over the toilet to take a long-awaited piss, he finds that he can both reach to turn the shower on  _ and  _ get an unobstructed view of himself in the mirror - which is unfortunate for him because he looks like a rolled out sack of shit. Most of his hair hangs loose and tangled around his shoulders, but he can see the paltry remnants of a bun still tied up at the top of his head. There’s a dark stain around his collar, and the rainbow t-shirt barely reaches past his naval. His pants on the other hand hang so low and show so much pubic hair that he looks like he’s auditioning for the cover of DNA magazine, and the fact that his brothers  _ didn’t  _ insist on taking him to see a doctor earlier makes him question their mental faculties in this universe, too. 

He runs both hands down his face and back again, ‘It’s just a glimpse.’ He tells himself, looking once more in the mirror after he’s stripped off to make sure there are no surprise tattoos or piercings to discover, ‘Just a glimpse.’

Whatever that is. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


The shower helps. Even if it does leave him smelling like artificial apples and dove soap. He gives his hair a perfunctory drying-off, unable to muster the energy to do much more, and ties it to the top of his head out of the way. He wraps one towel around his waist, then another over his shoulders and grips them both tightly as he steps back out into the bedroom, fearful of running into any knee-height humans with no appreciation of boundaries.

There’s only one wardrobe, he realises. Which must mean Fingon and himself  _ share.  _ It’s a terrible thought, but not half as bad as what he finds inside. 

‘You can’t be fucking serious.’ he mutters, skimming over cotton and polyester, denim, plaid, and more polyester. There’s not a single Tom Ford, not even so much as a Burberry t-shirt, ‘This is... ‘ The only suit he finds is clearly Fingon’s and even more obviously bought from a place like Slaters, ‘This is just pitiful.’

It’s unacceptable. 

He’s supposed to go to this party in what? Dressed as a farmer from the west? A faddist owner of a vegan coffee shop? There’s nothing even remotely suitable, Fingon’s side at least appears to have slightly more variety, but it seems like the Maedhros of  _ this  _ universe doesn’t spend much time out of jeans, sweatpants or checked shirts. It’s a fucking nightmare. 

Ten minutes and five minor breakdowns later he does, in the end, manage to find one pair of pants not made from denim or cotton fleece. It’s not much, a pair of dark grey pants and a burgundy red t-shirt, but it’s adequate. And there’s no denim in sight. 

He’s still bitterly assessing his reflection when Fingon marches into the room and pushes the baby dough ball into his arms which, by reflex only, he manages to keep hold of. 

‘He spewed in my hair again.’ Is all the explanation he’s given before Fingon disappears into the cupboard-sized bathroom and leaves Maedhros alone with what must be a three-to-one ratio of drool to baby. He holds it away from his body like he’s carrying a particularly rabid cat and lies it carefully down on the bed. 

He doesn’t know if it can move on it’s own yet, but he remembers Fingon’s earlier technique of surrounding it with cushions and does the same with pillows. He should know this shit, he thinks, he spent nearly all of his childhood and teenage years looking after his brothers and cousins and yet, when he looks down at the fat little body on the bed he feels nothing but anxiety. 

Fingon comes back into the room rubbing a few of his long braids between a towel. He’s saying something, but Maedhros has no idea what because his attention is pulled entirely towards the hideous thing he’s wearing. He didn’t have that on before...did he? No. No way, he would have noticed. He would have noticed and  _ Maedhros  _ would have spewed in his hair, too. 

‘Where’s your jumper?’ Fingon asks loudly like it’s not the first time he’s said it. 

‘My...what?’ He’s distracted, understandably so, by the red, blue and yellow lights flickering intermittently across Fingon’s chest. Fingon flings the towel on top of the pile of clothes hanging off the dresser and walks over to him, tugging lightly at Maedhros’ t-shirt.

‘Your jumper. Why aren’t you wearing it?’

He shakes his head, stares blankly in reply until Fingon holds up something bright red and fluffy from the end of the bed.

‘No.’ he says. Because absolutely not. No way. No fucking way, ‘I’m not wearing that.’

It’s a Christmas jumper.

‘No,’ He says again. 

It has tiny, white felt balls daubed across the entirety of it in a horrible imitation of snow, and front and centre is the face of a reindeer with a plastic light-up nose.  _ A light-up nose. _ And he’s expected to  _ wear it.  _

_ In public.  _

Fingon’s picked up Dough Ball by now and is swaying him back and forth like he hadn’t upped the contents of his milk-filled stomach not five minutes earlier, ‘Why not?’ He asks on a turn, ‘You’re not leaving me to go dressed like this on my own, are you?’

Because Fingon’s wearing a Christmas tree. Complete with swishing green tassels and real lights. 

‘You think Daddy should wear his jumper don’t you, En?’ Fingon says in that voice people use when talking to animals and children who don’t reach past their shins, ‘You do, don’t you?’

Dough Ball blows a raspberry and tries to cram a chubby little hand into his mouth, Fingon turns back to Maedhros with a “See?” expression. 

‘I’m not wearing it.’ He says again, he’s been through enough today and he doesn’t care what the baby thinks.

Fingon blows a raspberry in return, directly on to the baby’s cheek and rolls his eyes, ‘Is Daddy being boring?’

Dough Ball makes a sucking noise as he manages to fit more fingers between his lips.

‘Yes I know he is, isn’t he?’ Fingon nods and spins in a circle one way then the other, stopping only to blow another raspberry on the baby’s face, ‘Daddy’s boring.’

Daddy isn’t boring, Daddy just has dignity. And he’s not Daddy. 

‘Daddy, look!’

It’s all the warning he gets before Kid One races into the bedroom and throws herself into him. Or tries to. Maedhros steps back instinctively and very nearly crashes into Fingon who, thankfully, is too distracted by the baby to notice. He realises what a mistake  _ that  _ was when he looks down and sees that the kid has her arms out as though she’d been expecting him to pick her up. She’s looking at him now like he’s just told her the sad truth about Santa Claus. 

‘I’m Hulk.’ She says quietly, letting her hands drop to her sides. She’s wearing a Hulk costume. 

‘That’s great, kid.’ He says, and stretches a hand down to pat her gently on the shoulder, ‘Looks uh. Looks good.’

Hardly Christmas party appropriate but with what Fingon is expecting the two of  _ them  _ to wear it’s practically Vogue. 

‘It was that or the hotdog.’ Fingon adds, hefting Dough Ball onto his hip as he comes to stand beside him, ‘I’ve decided to heed your advice and start choosing my battles more wisely.’

The kid looks up at him like he might be about to spontaneously grow a second head before turning on her heels and running out of the room. Looks like he really messed that one up. Fingon follows, seemingly oblivious to anything amiss, and Maedhros is left blissfully alone again. 

He lets out a long breath and stares in the mirror. It’s as good as it’s gonna get. His entire outfit probably cost less than fifty notes, but at least he’s not wearing Rudolph. 

  
  


Fingon’s waiting at the front door when he finally makes it downstairs. Dough Ball has been squashed into a baby-carrier and he’s just finished zipping up the other kids' coats when he stands up, grabs Maedhros by the collar and pulls him down to press a fierce kiss to his mouth. His stomach flips and somersaults and a shiver shoots down his spine in a way that he is absolutely  _ not  _ going to think about. 

It’s over faster than it started and Fingon is halfway down the path with kids in tow before Maedhros recovers from the vibrations firing around his veins. 

‘You strap Emelle in. I’ll do the boys.’ Fingon says when he reaches the minivan. 

Kid One is staring at him cautiously from a green bumper seat - hulk themed, he presumes - and he tries to throw her a reassuring smile. It doesn’t work. Her eyes only get wider and she pulls her hands in like she’s afraid of him touching them. He looks over to Fingon, who’s too busy with the carrier to have noticed, then tries again. He smiles. Pulls the belt over her little body and clips it in. When he stands back he sees that the upper part of the seatbelt is across her chin and the bumper-chair isn’t supported at all. That can’t be right. He unclips it and looks down from the clip to the buckle. Maybe he has to slide it  _ under  _ the seat? 

‘It goes through there.’ Kid One whispers, she’s barely moved an inch since he opened the door but she points a finger towards a module on the left. Maedhros slips the belt through and does the same on the other side when she points that one out. He looks down triumphantly. 

  
  


‘Thanks.’ he says, but she turns away and looks out the window on the other side of the car. He closes the door and jumps when he turns and sees Fingon standing in front of him. 

‘Rock, paper, scissors for designated driver.’ He says with an outheld fist. It takes a minute, but when Maedhros realises the stakes he’s all in. Eru, what he wouldn’t give for a sazerac right now. 

He holds out his own fist and nods, ‘Absolutely.’

‘Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot.’

Fingon always picks scissors. The thought comes to him from nowhere, he’d forgotten he even knew that about him as he keeps his fist held out in the rock gesture. 

Fingon chooses scissors. 

‘Every time.’ he groans with an upwards glance to the sky before turning his glare directly on Maedhros, ‘Fine. But no wine. I’m not holding your hair when you start throwing it all back up again.’

It’s strange, hearing that. That  _ this  _ Fingon, in  _ this  _ timeline, knows such an insignificant and trivial thing about him. That his stomach has all the resilience of a paper bag in a storm when it comes to wine. It wasn’t even like they spent much time drinking  _ before  _ he left, apart from the odd bottle of vodka and cheap alcopops shared between cousins on a Friday night. It’s a little unnerving. That he’s in a place where he’s had an entire life, and people who have shared it with him, and at most he only knows their names. 

Fingon climbs sulkily into the driver's seat, and Maedhros follows to his side shortly after, a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach and an uneasy sense of foreboding. 


End file.
